A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Alex McLeod studied drawing then switched to computer-generated digital imagery. Since his first solo exhibition at Angell Gallery in 2010, Alex has shown his work internationally in New York, Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Denver, Philadelphia, San Jose, Rio de Janeiro, Montreal, and New Zealand. Alex's work was included in Cart Blanche 2 catalogue, published by Magenta Press in 2008. He was also in Toronto's Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art 2010 summer group show, Empire of Dreams. His work has been reviewed by Elle Magazine, Toronto Life, Canadian Art, CBC News, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Montreal Gazette, MacLean's, The Huffington Post, Wired Magazine, The Denver Post, The Globe and Mail, Design Lines Magazine, NOW Magazine, and the Kayne West Blog.

Artist Statement

Alex McLeod constructs hyperrealistic 3D environments filled with crystalline mountains, fiery lakes, and rotund clouds, all rendered in a sickly sweet and gooey candy-colored palette. Recalling the wide-open vistas of Romantic landscape painting while at the same time staging otherworldly dystopias, McLeod's CGI prints act as hybrid spaces that imply an almost infinite recombination of the past and present, the real and virtual. Beneath their seductively polished surfaces, of glimmering fortresses and floating geometric abstractions, lies a haunting stillness that comes forth in the aftermath of cataclysmic events. The cause of destruction remains unknown in these depopulated spaces -there are no people in these images, however much human traces remain in the rickety railways and empty fortresses. And yet, from the twilight of devastation shown in these strange dioramas lies possibilities for hope and rebirth in our own digital milieu through the artist's new approaches to concepts as varied as ecological responsibility and the shared intersections between photography and painting.